On July 30, the 2nd Honeywell Technologies China Growth Summit was successfully held in Shanghai. Compared to its inaugural edition, this year's summit holds even greater strategic significance. Honeywell has previously completed its business split: the Aerospace business was independently listed on June 29, 2026, and the High-Performance Materials business completed its spinoff on October 30, 2025, now operating independently under the name "Solvaira." Meanwhile, Honeywell Technologies operates independently as a global enterprise focusing on the automation sector. At this summit, the Honeywell Technologies Forge Intelligent Interconnection Platform (hereinafter referred to as "Forge") officially landed in China. This is not merely the release of a technical product, but a full-scale rollout of Honeywell Technologies' new strategic direction, dedicated to leading the industry's transition from automation to autonomy.

During the in-depth dialogue at the media roundtable, we gained insight into how this century-old industrial giant, following its strategic restructuring and upgrade, deeply integrates its profound global technological accumulation with China's domestic industrial demands and innovation ecosystem.

Strategic Restructuring: Becoming a More Focused Automation Enterprise

Reviewing the past two years and more, Honeywell Technologies has made frequent moves in the capital markets: spinning off non-core businesses while completing a series of heavyweight acquisitions, including Compressor Controls Corporation (CCC), Carrier's global security business, Air Products' liquefied natural gas (LNG) business, Sundyne, Li-ion Tamer, and Johnson Matthey's catalyst technology business.

Behind this series of "additions and subtractions" lies a clear strategic consideration. Yu Feng, President of Honeywell Technologies Greater China, summarized it with one main theme: "Making Honeywell Technologies a global enterprise focused on the automation sector." Upon completion of the spinoff, the three independent companies each possess more focused strategic positioning and more flexible resource allocation capabilities. For Honeywell Technologies, this means a more targeted strategic direction, faster innovation paces, and optimized investment layouts.

Following the strategic restructuring, Honeywell Technologies' brand-new strategic landscape in China has unfolded clearly. Facing the new starting point post-spinoff, Yu Feng used three "unchanged" points to summarize Honeywell Technologies' strategic determination: the original aspiration of deeply cultivating China and achieving sustainable development remains unchanged; the customer-centric service tenet remains unchanged; and the pace of iterative innovation keeping close to the technological frontier remains unchanged. Behind these three "unchanged" points are two more focused directions.

First is the automation field, covering scenarios such as industries, buildings, and processes. Second is the low-carbon energy field, expanding from traditional energy services such as oil, coal, and chemical industries to clean energy tracks including renewable energy, solar power, photovoltaics, and energy storage. Yu Feng specially noted that China's layout in new quality productive forces and low-carbon development highly aligns with Honeywell Technologies' strategy of "leading industry from automation to autonomy," which is the underlying logic for the company to deeply integrate its global technology accumulation into the Chinese market.

Forge: Making AI a Decision-Making Assistant That Understands Business Better

If strategic restructuring clarified the direction for transformation, then the landing of the Forge Intelligent Interconnection Platform is the core engine for Honeywell Technologies to realize its "autonomy" vision.

Over the past few years, a large number of digitalization projects have emerged in China's industrial sector, but the phenomenon of "heavy on display, light on practical results" remains common. Industrial data has long been scattered across factory DCS, PLCs, sensors, and various specialized systems, differing in formats and isolated from one another. Shi Wei, Chief Technology Officer of Honeywell Technologies Greater China, believes: "The challenge has never been the data itself, but how to combine data with actual operational scenarios, impart business context to data, and transform data value into the capability to drive decisions and actions." The Honeywell Technologies Forge Intelligent Interconnection Platform was born to address this.

Based on an open architecture and leveraging Honeywell Technologies' long-accumulated sensor R&D, self-developed gateways, and Niagara Framework technology systems, Forge efficiently accomplishes domain-wide data collection, cloud deployment, and intelligent analysis.

The key lies in the fact that Forge processes each customer's own production and operation data, and these real-time data are the customer's unique assets. Shi Wei emphasized: "The value of Forge differs from traditional software platforms that merely aggregate data. It combines AI with deep industrial domain expertise, enabling it to understand operational environments and business scenarios, provide actionable recommendations, and help customers achieve measurable business outcomes."

He further summarized the key promotion directions of Honeywell Technologies' industrial AI layout: making AI "understand processes" rather than "guess data"; achieving lightweight deployment; building localized exclusive operating environments; and focusing on segmented industrial tracks while collaborating with industry, academia, and research to solve professional pain points that general models cannot adapt to.

As of July this year, Forge has served more than 25,000 customers globally, covering over 288,000 sites and helping manage approximately 5.5 million equipment assets. In China, the landing of Forge has taken crucial localization steps: deploying and building exclusive operating environments, and engaging in deep cooperation with domestic cloud service providers. This directly responds to customer concerns regarding data security and compliance.

Facing the economic calculation during the AI implementation process, Yu Feng shared the "operation navigation" co-created with Shenghong Petrochemical. Based on the actual operating conditions of Shenghong Petrochemical's propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit, this system integrates local AI, digital twin technology, and process mechanism models. Yu Feng revealed: "After more than a year of operation, the unit has continuously remained within the optimal operating range, with manual operation frequency dropping by 50%, propane recovery rate increasing by over 10%, and steam savings alone saving over 10 million RMB annually. The project has achieved remarkable economic benefits, realizing an annual return on investment (ROI) of approximately 300%."

This case profoundly reveals that the core value of industrial AI lies in translating technical capabilities into quantifiable economic benefits and operational efficiencies, which can truly prove the significance of its implementation.

Rooted in China: Accelerating AI Implementation Toward an Autonomous Future

The choice of the Forge Intelligent Interconnection Platform to land in China at this juncture is no accident. It is a strategic, inevitable choice made by Honeywell Technologies after its independent operation, based on a profound insight into the global industrial competition landscape and targeted at China's specific industrial stage.

In a crowded track full of automation giants and flying AI concepts, how does Honeywell Technologies break through?

Yu Feng emphasized that Honeywell Technologies does not blindly pursue universal general-purpose large models, but firmly guards the bottom line of "precision, reliability, and explainability." This differentiated positioning determines Forge's genes: it must be built on existing reliable control systems, ensuring underlying safety while superimposing AI capabilities on top for optimization, with humans always remaining in the loop to hold ultimate decision-making power. "We do not sell AI concepts; we deliver solutions that can take responsibility for real-world outcomes."

The timing choice of this strategic implementation deeply resonates with the current transformation pulse of Chinese industries. For example, the popular data center sector is facing the dual pressures of green electricity integration and surging computing power power consumption. Shi Wei introduced Honeywell Technologies' "end-to-end energy efficiency and security foundation" solution for data centers, which provides closed-loop capabilities across the entire chain from grid entry to chip heat dissipation, including redundant PLC environmental control, energy storage + AI scheduling engines, and early fire warning based on chemical-physical sensing.

Despite fierce competition in the industrial AI track, Yu Feng believes that Honeywell Technologies' core advantages lie in: "First, a century of industry knowledge accumulation; second, a complete technology chain from sensors to the cloud, covering hardware, software, services, and platform full-stack capabilities; third, deep local cultivation through 'East for East'." He specially emphasized a viewpoint: "Solutions that can run smoothly and stably in China often possess the capability to serve the global market as well, because China's comprehensive and complex industrial system is a natural 'stress testing ground' for industrial AI."

Based on this strategic judgment, Honeywell Technologies' industrial AI layout in China presents a clear evolutionary logic. In the short term, the company focuses on practical application implementation, lowering application thresholds through open platforms to enable more industries to achieve digital upgrades at a faster pace. At the summit, Honeywell Technologies launched the Forge China Ecosystem Cooperation Plan, joining hands with partners from all walks of life such as Zhongda International, Fuhai Holdings, Sinochem Smart Intelligence, and Shanghai University to build an industrial innovation ecosystem. It aims to accelerate technology penetration in high-growth industries such as semiconductors, marine engineering and shipping, and data centers through open collaboration. From a long-term vision perspective, Honeywell Technologies' goal is to promote the leap of industry from automation to autonomy, leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as AI, cloud computing, and industrial interconnection so that industrial systems can not only execute automatically, but also make autonomous decisions and self-optimize.

Conclusion

From the window of the 2026 Honeywell Technologies China Growth Summit, what we see is not merely a company's product innovation, but a profound strategic evolution and capability reshaping. Operating independently, Honeywell Technologies has clarified its positioning in the automation era through unswerving commitments and focused determination. Meanwhile, the landing of the Forge Intelligent Interconnection Platform in China has become a key breakthrough for it to crack industrial AI implementation and march toward an "autonomous" future.

The root of its success lies in a profound understanding of the urgent demands and unique environment of Chinese industries. Honeywell Technologies deeply integrates century-old industrial knowledge accumulation and globally advanced technology platforms with localized needs, industry pain points, and a thriving innovation ecosystem. This turns "East for East" from a slogan into practical results that stand the test of scrutiny.

The "autonomous" vision depicted by Honeywell Technologies is not intended to replace humans, but to liberate them from repetitive operations and experience-dependency through AI empowerment, shifting toward higher-value decision-making and creation. Such a pragmatic approach is even more convincing in the current tech wave. Honeywell Technologies' practices in China are exploring a realistic, referenceable, and replicable path for the grand process of global industry moving from automation to autonomy.

Contact Information:

Manager: Jim Pei

Email: sales6@amikon.cn

Whatsapp: +8618020776782

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